


Chameleon

by anachronicity



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Multi, fic about characters i love more than the canon authors ever did, these relationships rarely get past 'implied'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-08
Updated: 2011-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:45:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anachronicity/pseuds/anachronicity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven's spent her life trying to be what others want. She no longer knows what she wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chameleon

When Charles and Erik come in from Cerebro - Charles still riding the elation of the device's success, Erik looking down at him with amusement bright in his eyes - Raven is standing in the kitchen, wearing a pretty but housewifely face, a white apron, and a welcoming smile. Charles stops dead at the sight of her.

"Raven," he says. "You... cooked?"

"Hello to you, too, Charles," Raven says. She can't keep a touch of dryness out of her voice but the smile stays convincingly in place.

A pleased expression is beginning to win out over the bewilderment on Charles' face. "What's the occasion?"

"Does there have to be one?"

He hesitates. "No - no, I suppose not. Thank you," he smiles.

Raven smiles back almost genuinely and avoids looking at the anger she knows has overtaken the amusement in Erik's eyes.

-

  


He corners her in the hallway after they've eaten, using the significant height advantage he has when she's in this body to loom over her. "What is this, Raven?" he hisses.

She tilts her head back against the wall, dark ringlets bobbing, to meet his belligerent stare innocently. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't play games, you know exactly what I mean," he says. "And take that... that _face_ off."

She narrows her eyes at him, but he doesn't back down, and after a moment she sighs, letting her body ripple back to reptilian blue skin. "Better?" she asks ascerbically, and is almost mollified when he still doesn't back down from the glare of yellow eyes. In fact, the opposite: he steps in a little closer. She's too aware that there's a telepath in the next room to let herself dwell on thoughts of kissing him, but the images are still undeniably there: reddened lips caught by blue, broad hands on ridged skin.

"Why do you do this, Raven?" asks Erik softly.

Raven stiffens. She pushes him back, straightens up, and snaps, "What do you want from me?"

He's raised his hands in a gesture of innocence, a defensive gesture, and his voice is defensive too. "I just want you to stop pretending," he says. "To feel like you can be yourself."

"Myself."

"Yes, yourself. Raven -" and the intensity in the words is more intimidating than the way he had been towering over her earlier - "there is nothing wrong with you. You don't need to be ashamed of who you are." He doesn't wait for a response before turning and prowling away, slamming the door behind him without laying a hand on it.

And Raven is left, her back against the wall, to slide slowly down to the floor and think, _but who am I?_

-

  


Part of her thinks that everything was much easier before Erik turned up. She knew what Charles wanted - he wanted a delicate, feminine woman, someone to be the maternal presence he'd never had. It had been easy to play along, to fall comfortably into the role of Charles' sister and forget - at least for a little while - that she wanted anything more from him.

And now there was Erik, and he would have been easy too: he wanted the mutant, the ally, the defiant and untamed woman. She could have done that. But Charles wouldn't have liked it. Therein lay the problem.

Because at times like now, when she sat on the couch in the office Charles had commandeered as a temporary study with her legs tucked up under her, wearing the slim, blonde body that came as second nature, watching Charles and Erik deep in discussion, she knew that either one of them, glancing at her, would disapprove. Charles would shake his head at her unladylike posture, and Erik's jaw would clench at the human disguise.

But then, neither of them does glance at her. They pass the glances between themselves, warm, secret looks like caresses. She imagines the caresses to be physical: Erik's hands sliding into Charles' unruly hair, mouths meeting hungrily, continuing the same antagonistic but somehow symbiotic battle the two had been engaged in since the moment Charles pulled Erik from the water.

She imagines two mouths on her neck, two sets of hands on her skin, the contrast between smooth flesh and a fractal of scars. She wants.

A small noise from the other side of the room snaps her out of it, and she looks up to see Charles staring at her, shock and embarassment plain on his face but turning to chagrin as Raven flushes angrily and snaps, "Get out of my head," before storming out of the study.

-

  


When Charles finds her in the lab a little later she is sitting on the floor, hugging her knees as she stares out the window and chews her lip. She doesn't need to look up to see it's him who settles beside her; he effectively announces himself with a gentle brush against her mind that she can feel if she's paying attention.

"Why were you so shocked?" she mutters a little sullenly. "You must've seen plenty of fantasies before."

"Yes, but they don't normally involve _me_ ," Charles says, in the almost-patronising way he reserves for her, the one that she hates because it so clearly says _I'm very fond of you but you've disappointed me again_.

She's always going to disappoint him, she thinks, and hides her face against her knees.

He and Erik leave the next day, and when they come back, new mutants in tow, things change.

-

  


"I expected more from you," Charles says before he leaves, and Raven can feel her face fall. The others exchange embarrassed glances and begin to straighten up the room - all but Angel, who comes to stand next to Raven, tucking away her wings. "Both of them, huh?" she says, amusement and sympathy blending in her voice.

"What?"

"Don't evade it, I saw the look on your face. You're wasting your time, though," Angel adds. "They've only got eyes for each other."

" _What?_ No, they... I mean, Charles is..."

The look Angel gives her is cynical. "Honey, you know I met them in a strip club. They were sharing a bed. In a strip club."

Raven honestly can't think of a way to reply to that, and Angel goes on, "Sometime, you're gonna have to stop being what other people want you to be, and start being what you want to be."

"I don't know what you mean," Raven says hastily, and turns away because she would never admit how close to home that hit.

-

  


She thinks about what Angel said, though. She can't stop thinking about it. Even after Angel's left with Shaw, it sticks in her mind. What is it that she wants to be?

When Hank offers her the cure - she knows he thinks it's a blessing but she can't see it that way, can't see anything the way she used to - she turns him down. She thinks this is what she wants but she keeps second-guessing herself. Does she think this is what she wants because it's what Erik wants for her?

"Should we have to hide?" she says, and realises that she's spent so long hiding, so long being what others expect, that she barely knows who she is.

Erik wants her like this, she knows he does, but when he sends her away with a kiss and a platitude she flees to Charles, who doesn't want her like this. Or at all. And Raven doesn't know why she still wants him when she's as sick of his hypocrisy as she is of her own.

-

  


"Go with Erik. It's what you want."

Raven almost wants to scream because for someone who knows almost everything about the human mind Charles can be astonishingly stupid sometimes - that isn't all she wants, that isn't what she wants, how did everything go so wrong so quickly - but she doesn't say a word. She knows he expects her to go, so even while she swears this is the last time she will do something to avoid disappointing Charles, she walks away from him to take Erik's hand.

-

  


With the Brotherhood she never uses her human forms in private. She always wears her blue skin - _mutant and proud_.

One day Angel stops her when they pass in the hallway and says, "Still doing what everyone else wants you to, Mystique?" quietly before walking on.

Mystique stares after her, groping for a reply that isn't _yes_.

She leaves that night, determined to find herself, and doesn't come back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> My headcanon FC!verse is not in the least compliant with the trilogy!verse, so where exactly Mystique went after that is anyone's guess. Also, yeah, I don't know why there's a kitchen in a covert CIA facility either. Just run with it. This whole thing is just a side effect of watching all of the films in far too short a time period and reacting to most of it with _Mystique, Raven, my baby, what are you doing to her stop it why can't you love her like I love her_. So yeah, thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it, and I'm unsure about a lot of this so feedback tames the savage beast of my self-doubt. :3


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